


Just a Bug

by vials



Category: Our Kind of Traitor - John le Carré
Genre: Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-22
Updated: 2017-05-22
Packaged: 2018-11-03 19:17:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10973676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vials/pseuds/vials
Summary: Something wakes Yvonne up in the middle of the night, and it isn't what she initially expects.





	Just a Bug

Yvonne didn’t usually wake up in the middle of the night for things such as a drink or a bathroom break, because she tended to work such things into her bedtime routine to be sure she didn’t miss out on a single moment of sleep. Apparently she needed more of it these days, because when she woke up just past two in the morning, desperate for a drink, she realised she had been so tired on her way to bed that she hadn’t stopped in the kitchen for a drink or even thought to bring one to bed with her. She lay in bed for a long moment, staring up at the darkness until it began to shift into shapes, and wasn’t ashamed to admit that she felt thoroughly sorry for herself. There was nothing worse, she thought, than having to get out of bed once you were settled; it was a cruel fate and she only had herself to blame for it.

Still, her dry throat was worse, so she pushed herself up and reluctantly swung her legs out of bed. It wasn’t as cold as she had thought it would be, but the floor was still unpleasantly cool on her bare feet. She edged to the door and cracked it open, listening to see if she was the only one up. The silence in the house told her she was, and so she edged slowly down the hall without turning the lights on. Her eyes had adjusted by now and so she made good time, reaching Luke’s bedroom at the end of the hallway and turning the corner there. She had walked past the room entirely before she realised that Luke’s door had been open wider than usual, and that all the times she had crept past on her way to bed and he had already been asleep, she had been able to see him curled under the covers. She had only seen a glimpse of the room but she knew that the covers had been thrown back – she had seen the white of the sheet underneath. She stopped, listening hard, but could still hear nothing that would suggest somebody else was awake. 

Maybe he got up to do some more work, Yvonne thought. Luke kept strange sleeping habits, though Yvonne’s weren’t exactly normal either. She was the sort to stay up very late and sleep in, but Luke apparently woke whenever he felt like it and slept in the same way too; there was no way to predict it. She and Ollie had discussed it a few times, wondering if it was just a case of eccentricity, or if he had some kind of sleeping disorder, but they had never come to any solid conclusions. Something Ollie had said had stuck with Yvonne, though – he had made an offhanded comment, intended as a joke, that Luke “slept like a prisoner”. When she had quizzed him on what he meant by that, Ollie explained that prisoners of war tended to display the same kind of patterns as Luke, sleeping at odd times of the day, usually for a chunk in the afternoon and often waking up before dawn. 

“It’s because there was nothing to do,” Ollie had said, while peeling a mountain of potatoes. “And because it was cold, in the winter. Prisoners would huddle together and sleep the day away. What else could you do? If you’re kept locked up in some tiny cell for that amount of time, you’d probably want to pass the time any way you could.”

“So it’s reasonable to assume we’re sharing a house with a convicted criminal?” Yvonne had joked, and Ollie laughed.

“Nah. They don’t tend to do that in modern prisons. Prisons nowadays tend to have structure, things for inmates to do, and I’m pretty sure you’re not allowed to just sleep all the time. I mean, I don’t know what it’s like in other prisons, because there are some hellholes out there, but to be honest with you I don’t think you’d dare sleep in a place like that. Not until night, anyway, when everyone else was asleep and you had less of a chance of being shanked.” 

Yvonne had had a couple more questions regarding what had caused Ollie to come out with such a specific comparison, but Luke had entered the room at that moment, yawning and tousle-haired from, ironically, an afternoon nap. Ollie had been right, though. While Luke’s overall sleeping pattern could never be predicted, it was almost a guarantee that he would sleep for a few hours in the afternoon.

He was probably working, then, Yvonne thought. He’d found he couldn’t sleep and he was working, though it didn’t explain why she was nearing the kitchen now and there were no lights on anywhere that she would expect. The living room was empty, and while the kitchen door was pulled mostly closed, no light shone around it, either from the overhead light or any of the lights in the dining room. Yvonne moved slowly down the hall, slightly unnerved, and wondered if Luke had gone out. They were generally told to refrain from going out at odd hours, in case any neighbours happened to see them and grow suspicious, but she got the feeling that if Luke was in one of his more morose moods it probably wouldn’t stop him. Despite the fact it was a logical assumption, she didn’t think that was the case. The house felt _full_ , and she knew that Luke was still there somewhere.

She got a decent idea of where he was when she reached halfway down the hall and heard the smallest cough from her left. The downstairs bathroom was there, the door closed, but she could see from the crack under the door that the light wasn’t on in there, either. She paused, straining to hear if she had imagined the sound. It was chilly in the hallway from where the windows had been left open while Ollie had been cooking, and the chill combined with the way the house was eerily silent now meant that Yvonne could hardly help herself when it came to remembering every horror movie or ghost story she had ever come across in her life. Had she really heard the cough coming from the bathroom? Or had it been from behind her? Or maybe from one of the rooms? She felt ridiculous, but at the same time, it was easy to believe in her current surroundings. 

There was no need to worry about that, though, because she heard the cough again, definitely from the bathroom. It sounded strange this time, not so much a cough as a _retch_ , and Yvonne frowned, forgetting her earlier unease and reaching up to tap gently at the door with her knuckle.

“Luke?” she whispered. “Are you in there?”

There was no answer, and Yvonne sensed a stillness from the room that felt as though whoever was in there was trying to hide, despite the fact they had clearly already been noticed. Yvonne thought about leaving, but something rooted her to the spot. She couldn’t quite work out what it was, and turned over the last few minutes in search of it. She remembered the eerie stillness to the house. She remembered it had felt odd, as though there had been sound but it was no longer there. She remembered she hadn’t realised she was thirsty right away, and that it was unusual for her to wake for such things, and in turn she remembered that no, she had been woken up by something else, a noise.

She remembered passing by Luke’s room and seeing the door wide open, the covers thrown off – and the chair, overturned on the floor and pushed a distance too great for it to have just been knocked over; rather it looked as though it had been bumped into with force and sent skidding, or someone had knocked it over and then tripped over it. There had been an element of panic to the whole scene, and suddenly Yvonne’s unease made a lot more sense.

She knocked on the door again, a little more firmly this time.

“Luke,” she said, pressing her mouth close to the door. “Are you alright?”

He seemed to have accepted that he was caught; she heard him cough openly, and it had that weak sound to it that told Yvonne that he most certainly wasn’t alright.

“Are you…” Yvonne began, wincing as she heard a particular bad cough grab him. She waited for it to fade before she tried again. “Are you throwing up in there?”

“I’m fine,” Luke said hoarsely. He definitely sounded as though he had been throwing up, but there was a rougher quality to his voice that told Yvonne it might be something else, too. “Don’t worry, I’m – it’s fine.”

She heard shuffling, the flush of a toilet, and then above it the harsh blast of one of the taps. It went on long after the toilet had stopped gurgling; from the splashing Yvonne could tell Luke was brushing his teeth and throwing some water over his face. When the door opened she could see she had been right; in the dim light she could make out Luke’s hair was stuck to his forehead and his eyelashes were damp, though looking at the blotches visible on his pale cheeks, she thought it might not all be water. 

“You look exhausted,” she said, and Luke gave a weak smile.

“Haven’t managed to sleep much yet,” he said.

“Are you sick?”

“No. Well, maybe. A bit. It’s alright, though. I’m sure it’s just a bug.”

“Come with me to the kitchen,” Yvonne said. “Get a drink. You need it, or you’ll be dehydrated.”

“I hope I didn’t disturb you,” Luke said, as Yvonne lead the way to the kitchen. “I thought I was being quiet, but –” He broke off, as though he were suddenly remembering something. Yvonne wondered if he, too, was thinking about the overturned chair in his bedroom. “Maybe I wasn’t as quiet as I thought.”

“No, you didn’t wake me,” Yvonne said, because really she still wasn’t sure what had. She pushed open the door to the kitchen, smelling the lasagne they’d had for dinner and remembering it fondly. She reached out and flicked the light on, and caught Luke blinking in the sudden light. “I don’t know why I woke up, actually. I realised I was thirsty, but who knows what actually woke me up.”

“Probably me,” Luke said, morose. “Sorry. I know you were up late.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Yvonne told him, getting some cups out of the cupboard. “I can fall asleep anywhere if I’m tired enough. I’m sure I’ll lay down again and be out in a few seconds. Is water alright, or do you want some juice or something?”

“Water’s fine,” Luke said, and when Yvonne handed the cup to his she saw his hands shook enough to slop some of the water onto his hand, and the glass clinked against his teeth as he took rapid little sips. “Thank you.”

“It’s alright,” Yvonne said kindly. She hadn’t realised how small Luke was, especially now he was just in an old creased T-shirt. His arms were too skinny, the kind of arms that looked as though they hadn’t always been so thin and had lost whatever weight they’d had too quickly to be healthy. As he lifted the glass, she could see bright white marks at his wrists, circling around and out of sight. She wondered if he had ever been handcuffed, and then thought about Ollie’s comment and felt guilty for the way they had been joking about it.

“It’s probably just a bug,” Luke said suddenly, repeating what he had insisted earlier. Yvonne looked at him properly and saw he was staring at her, looking almost nervous. She realised that he had probably caught her staring at his arms, and she scolded herself for being so indiscrete.

“Probably,” she said, giving him that out. “Hopefully you don’t pass it on to the rest of us, huh?”

“No,” Luke said, the glass clinking as he took another sip. “Or stress. Maybe it’s stress. We’re working pretty hard.”

“We are,” Yvonne agreed. “Perhaps you should take it easy for tomorrow. You have looked a bit shaky for the last few days.”

“Have I?” Luke asked, sounding shocked, as though he had temporarily forgotten that it actually played to his advantage in the story he was trying to tell. “Oh. Yes, I suppose I have.”

“Are you sure you’re alright, Luke?” Yvonne asked, and Luke nodded too vigorously for the question.

“I’m fine,” he said. “Honestly. I am. Sometimes this happens. It’s alright, really.”

“What’s this?” Yvonne asked, and Luke gave a small shrug.

“You know. I get sick, and I can’t sleep very well. I do think it’s a stress thing, now I come to think of it. It’ll pass after a little while. I’m not like, contagious or anything. At least, I hope not.”

“Me too,” Yvonne said, smiling. “It’ll be boring working on all this by myself.”

“Even if I am sitting there looking miserable?” Luke asked, managing a small returning smile. 

“I have a toddler,” Yvonne said, laughing. “I can deal with someone pouting a little. At least you’re not throwing your food on the floor and screaming.”

“I feel like it sometimes.”

“Me too, but the thing about being an adult is that we know we can’t.”

Luke laughed, shakily, but it was genuine. Yvonne thought he looked a little better, now that he had had something to drink, and found herself wondering when the last time he had actually drank something was. Luke had a bad habit of forgetting to do such things, and she was sure that if Ollie wasn’t around to cook up things far too tempting to miss out on, Luke would probably not even be getting one meal a day. No wonder he looked so sickly.

“You should try and get some sleep,” she said, once they had finished the water and rinsed out the glasses. “I know you probably don’t feel like it, but try.”

A shadow passed over Luke’s face; he frowned, as though intending to protest, but as Yvonne moved towards the door his shoulders slumped slightly and he followed her.

“I guess,” he said, reluctantly. 

“Now you do sound like my daughter,” Yvonne joked, and Luke managed a smile, weaker this time.

“How does she get to bed when she doesn’t want to?” he asked.

“Well, luckily she’s a toddler, so she doesn’t actually know much about anything,” Yvonne told him. “She gets into bed and pouts a bit and then realises actually, she is tired, and falls right asleep.”

“You’re lucky. My son would demand stories until midnight sometimes.”

“Maybe take advice from him, then,” Yvonne said. “Read until you pass out.”

“I might try it,” Luke said, and Yvonne got the impression he was steeling himself for battle.

“Just try,” she told him gently, flicking out the light. They waited in the doorway for a moment, letting their eyes adjust. “I’ll be down the hall if you need me for anything. You know, if you feel really sick.”

A pause.

“I’ll keep it in mind,” Luke said quietly. Another pause. “Thanks.”

Yvonne’s hand found Luke’s wrist in the dark, and gave it a small, reassuring squeeze.


End file.
